Tōgō’s plan was meticulous, brilliant, and seemed calculated to place the Russians in the maximum amount of danger, with the Japanese backed up at all times by overlapping spheres of interest or fields of fire. Luckily for Tōgō, the plan was also flexible – the Russians did not quite arrive in the way that he had expected, and the full-scale plan of attack was never implemented exactly as Tōgō had intended.
The alert was sounded at 4:45 a.m. on 27 May 1905. One of Tōgō’s many patrol ships caught sight of unidentified vessels near the Gotō islands, at the north-weastern tip of Kyūshū. On Tōgō’s map, the simple designation ‘Square 203’ told him precisely where the Russians had been sighted, but offered eavesdroppers no clue as to what the Japanese thought they knew. The news, conveyed by wireless, reached Tōgō ten minutes later. For once, noted other officers, even the quiet Admiral Tōgō seemed excited. The Mikasa was underway by 6:05 a.m., as was every other Japanese ship in the first interception area, steaming out of their Korean base and into the Sea of Japan.
Tōgō calculated that the Russians were on the Japanese side of Tsushima, heading straight down the Strait at full speed (for them, a rather slow nine knots, barely half the capabilities of the newer Japanese ships), and that consequently, the Mikasa would be in range of them somewhere near the island of Okinoshima at around 2:00 p.m. It was a decidedly modern calculation – thanks to the wireless telegraph transmissions from his scouts, Tōgō was able to steer a course for the middle of nowhere, sure that by the time he arrived at the appointed patch of sea, his guns would be facing the Russian fleet. This was particularly important in the light of the day’s weather, as the dawn mist failed to dissipate as the sun rose. Visibility on the Strait was restricted to only five miles, allowing Tōgō to remain invisible to the Russians as late as 1:39 p.m., with the double column of the Russians chugging resolutely through the sea passage, a tantalising seven miles from Tōgō’s waiting armada.
At 1:55 p.m., within five minutes of his calculated time of engagement, Tōgō raised a signal aboard the Mikasa that, as was his habit, he deliberately intended to recall the words of Nelson before Trafalgar: ‘The rise or fall of the Empire depends on this battle. Let each man do his utmost.’
An officer suggested that Tōgō should get into the conning tower, which was considered less dangerous than the forward bridge. ‘I am getting on for sixty,’ answered the Admiral. ‘and this old body of mine is not worth caring for; but you young men who still have a long future before you should take care of yourselves, for you must do your utmost for your country.’7
There is an element of knowing, almost wilful samurai fatalism in Tōgō’s comment, as if he was almost hoping to be struck down in his hour of triumph. He ordered the course to be changed to south-southwest, so that, pending any other corrections, the two fleets were fated to pass each other in parallel lines, heading in opposite directions.
Tōgō remained on the port side of the Mikasa’s bridge, staring out to sea with his oversized marine binoculars. His left hand rested on the hilt of the sword at his side. His cheeks were puffed out – a sign that the Admiral was pondering a momentous decision.8 Suddenly, Tōgō blew the air from his cheeks. He ordered the Mikasa to swing around to north-northeast, now heading in the same direction as the Russians, drifting inexorably closer. The Russians opened fire at 2:08 p.m., targeting the Mikasa and the Shikishima at the head of the Japanese line. The Mikasa suffered her first casualties, but Tōgō waited another three minutes before giving the order to return fire.
With Tōgō’s flag prominent on her mast, the Mikasa attracted much of the Russian fire. The gunners who had proved so hapless in the North Sea had had many weeks to train and many of them were now far better shots. The Mikasa’s deck was so torn up as to be practically impassable, and her starboard side in particular suffered 40 direct hits. At 2:20 p.m., a 12-inch shell smashed into the starboard latrine, creating a deadly cloud of splinters that wounded fifteen men on the fore-bridge and four men on the conning tower, where Tōgō had recently refused to go. Tōgō himself was leaning over the ship’s compass on another of the bridges, staring impassively at the dial, which had been transfixed by a huge splinter that had missed killing him by mere inches. It was just one of many hits on that long day – the Mikasa was by far the most heavily damaged ship on the Japanese side, and would eventually log 113 casualties, almost a quarter of the losses for the entire Japanese fleet.9
The Russians began a course correction to evade the oncoming Japanese attack, heading further to the east, but the bombardment was already on. The Oslyabya was pelted with shells and obscured by a cloud of smoke, already foundering in the water. Rozhestvensky in the Suvorov was forced to duck out of the line after a shell smashed the ship’s steering gear. Much of the Mikasa’s task was accomplished in the first thirty minutes, as it was she who put the Suvorov out of action and threw the Russians into confusion. Dazed by a blow on the head, and bleeding from additional wounds on his heel and shoulder, Rozhestvensky was forced to hand command over to one of his subordinates as he was evacuated from the burning Suvorov. Rozhestvensky refused to admit that the Suvorov was done for and ordered that her flag should not be lowered. It was left to one of his officers to explain that the Suvorov was so badly damaged that there was nowhere left to hang the flag from. ‘Hang it over the helm!’ blurted Rozhestvensky, but his men wisely carried him off to a nearby destroyer.10
The Suvorov drifted as a floating wreck, her remaining crew members at the stern dutifully firing her single remaining gun into a new attacking wave of Japanese torpedo boats. Eventually, further damage caused her to capsize and sink, a mere thirteen miles from Okinoshima. After all the manoeuvres of the afternoon, she had drifted back practically to where she had started and she sank almost within sight of the island of Tsushima.
Realising that they would be unable to smash through the Japanese line without taking even heavier damage, the captain of the Borodino decided to head north around the Japanese. Tōgō, however, saw the Russians’ change of course, and ordered an immediate course correction from his own ships. Admiral Kamimura, in charge of Tōgō’s Second Division, kept to his original course, deliberately hoping to catch the Russians between the two Japanese lines. All the Russians could do was to turn back the way they had come, but with three autonomous flotillas of Japanese ships manoeuvring about them, it was easier said than done. After turning in a futile circle, the Russians were suddenly able to head south, disappearing back into the mists. There were enough Japanese ships on the water that this only gained them thirty minutes’ respite. At 5:05 p.m., several of Tōgō’s ships ran into part of the main squadron, successfully putting the Borodino out of action by incapacitating all her officers and causing critical damage to the Orel.
The Japanese fleet, both ahead and astern of the Russians, was able to put its superior speed and manouverability to good use. With each Japanese squadron functioning independently, the Russian fleet was forced to watch all sides and to answer repeated corrections in course, returns to previous courses, and new tacks. In some cases, particularly the lumbering support ships, the crews simply could not keep up with the darting Japanese. One by one, the Russian ships fell out of formation, strayed dangerously far from their protectors, or simply got lost.
Not every casualty was Russian. The flagship of Admiral Dewa’s Third Division, the Kasagi, took a hit dangerously close to the waterline and was forced to disengage. Guarded closely by two ships he had ordered out of the line to watch his flank, Dewa steered his rapidly-sinking vessel in towards shore, and then transferred to the Chitose in order to re-enter the battle.
As the sun began to set, the remnants of the Russian fleet were heading to the north. The Japanese ships received a simple command from Tōgō that they were to reassemble at dawn near the Korean island of Ullong-do. The cruisers and battleships turned and disappeared back into the mist, leaving the Russian fleet to the very different night tactics of the torpedo boats. At dusk, the Baltic Fle
et was already in tatters. Rozhestvensky’s fleet had included five newly-built Borodino-class battleships, including the Borodino herself and his own flagship the Suvorov. Four of them had sunk, and the sole survivor was heavily damaged. Rozhestvensky had also lost a cruiser and an auxiliary ship, and both his hospital ships had been captured.
As Tōgō sat exhausted in his quarters, an aide brought him the text of the wireless transmission that was intended for the Admiralty. It bragged that ‘at least’ four Russian vessels had been sunk. Tōgō quietly ordered for the ‘at least’ to be deleted. The day had gone well enough without any attempts at spin. The Russians were, to be sure, equally exhausted, but had no chance of rest. Some fortyfour Japanese torpedo boats and destroyers were now on the prowl, searchlights reaching into the gloom, gunners ready to unleash new attacks. While Tōgō rested his eyes, men implementing his careful plans sank one Russian ship, and damaged a battleship and two cruisers so severely that they were no longer able to steer.
The following morning, Tōgō was ready at dawn, as soon as he heard the first report of a sighting of enemy ships. The Russians had made it a little way further down the Strait and were now in the Sea of Japan itself – Japanese accounts often refer to the Battle of Tsushima as the Battle of the Sea of Japan, in acknowledgement of this later phase. The group comprised five Russian ships led by Rozhestvensky’s second-in-command. At 10:34 a.m., the Japanese vessels opened fire. The Russians held their course for another ten minutes, before suddenly hoisting signal flags that announced their surrender.
Tōgō waited for several minutes before ordering a ceasefire – he wanted to be sure that the Russians really had stopped shooting back. By 1:37 p.m., a launch from the Mikasa had picked up the Russian Rear-Admiral Nikolai Nebogatoff and conveyed him to Tōgō’s cabin, where the Admiral received his surrender. After agreeing standard terms, the handing over of the ships to the Japanese, and the prisoner-of-war status of the crews, the officers present drank a toast to the end of hostilities. Tōgō later revealed that this, too, had been a test. He had been watching the faces of the Russians to see how they took to this gentlemanly resolution, and saw only relief that their ordeal was over. It left him confident that the Russians would honour the terms of their own surrender, and that crews from Japanese vessels need not worry about sabotage or resistance as they took command of the captured Russian vessels.
Nebogatoff was even moved to discuss Tōgō’s winning tactics with him, asking him how he had been so sure that the Baltic Fleet would come through the Korea Strait, instead of taking the safer route behind Japan and past Hokkaido or Sakhalin. Nebogatoff was curious: how could Tōgō have been so sure? ‘I guessed,’ lied Tōgō, before changing the subject.11
Elsewhere in the Sea of Japan, Tōgō’s other squadrons were enjoying similar successes against surviving pockets of the shattered Baltic Fleet. Admiral Dewa sank a destroyer at dawn. Admiral Uryū ran into a cruiser and a destroyer 50 miles south of the dawn rendezvous, sinking the former and forcing the latter aground. The Fifth Destroyer Flotilla fought a long battle with the destroyer Gromki just off the coast of Korea, capturing her in such a state that she sank in the early afternoon. The Russian coastal defence vessel Ushakov, which certainly should never have been 18,000 miles from home in the first place, was spotted in the early afternoon, but refused to acknowledge signals telling her that the remnants of the fleet had surrendered. Her pursuers opened fire and pulled her crew from the water as she sank at sunset.
The battle was over in two days. By the evening of 28 May, some nineteen vessels of the Baltic Fleet had been sunk, and, including the two hospital ships, seven had been captured intact. Several others ran aground or sank on the run, still more fled for neutral ports and were interned, and only three made it to the intended destination of Vladivostok. Against Japanese casualties of 700 and the loss of three torpedo boats, the Russians lost more than 4,000 dead. The Japanese navy was left to process around 6,000 Russian prisoners of war, including wounded Admiral Rozhestvensky himself, who had been found aboard a destroyer captured in Korean waters late in the afternoon of 28 May.
On 3 June, Tōgō came ashore at Sasebo, and paid a visit to the bedside of Admiral Rozhestvensky. The Russian Admiral struggled to sit up in bed to shake Tōgō’s hand, while Tōgō offered his thoughts through an interpreter:
Defeat is a common fate of a soldier and there is nothing to be ashamed of in it. The great point is whether we have performed our duty. I cannot but express admiration for the brave manner in which the officers and men of your vessels fought in the late battle for two days continuously. For you, especially, who fearlessly performed your great task until you were seriously wounded, I beg to express my sincerest respect and also my deepest regrets. I hope you will take care of yourself and recover as soon as possible.12
Japanese accounts of the aftermath emphasise gentlemanly deportment and courtesy, although Tōgō’s visit to his fallen enemy seems to have been managed as much for his peace of mind as theirs. Once Tōgō, his fellow high-ranking Japanese officers and the foreign press had got their photo-call and their heart-warming anecdote, the Russians were left in the charge of junior Japanese officers who were not so welcoming. Rozhestvensky himself, scandalised at his poor food and dirty utensils, lodged a complaint with his captors, and ‘told them quite plainly, that in Russia pigs were better treated than we had been in Japan’.13
Despite such rancour behind the scenes, Tōgō’s victory was winning him plaudits far and wide. The ex-patriate British community in Yokohama wasted no time in publishing a commemorative commendation, comparing Tōgō to a famous English Admiral and concluding: ’Nelson, 1805. Tōgō, 1905.’ As if that were not clear enough, the parchment included pictures of the two admirals side-by-side.
The crushing defeat of Russia secured many diplomatic victories for Japan. The British soon extended the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and recognised Japan’s interest in Korea. In a secret communiqué of July 1905, so did the Americans. The Taft-Katsura memorandum outlined American interests in the Philippines, but also tentatively acknowledged the likelihood of Korea becoming a Japanese protectorate or even colony, as it would indeed become by 1910.
The American President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in to prevent any further fighting. The Russians might have lost their fleet, but the remnants of the land army were still in place north of Mukden; and fighting in Manchuria might be expected to stretch on for many more months. In fact, both Russia and Japan were at the limit of their powers. Already, back along the Trans-Siberian Railway, there were whispers of revolution against the Tsar. The Japanese, meanwhile, were already on the brink of bankruptcy after the expense of the two-year conflict.
Roosevelt helped both sides save face by inviting them to come to the negotiating table. Representatives of the countries met throughout August at Portsmouth, New Hampshire and eventually concluded the Treaty of Portsmouth, for which Roosevelt would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. In it, the Russians agreed to pull out of Manchuria, leaving much of the southern Manchurian railway in Japanese hands, along with certain strategic points, including Port Arthur itself. Korea was essentially handed over to the Japanese. Russia also relinquished the lower half of Sakhalin Island, extending Japanese territory to the north by several hundred miles.
Neither the Russians nor the Japanese were pleased with the results. The Tsar suffered further damage to his standing with his people for giving up Russian territory and not keeping his original promise to continue the war on land. Among the Russians, there were further cavils over the wording in the document. Rozhestvensky, in particular, was astonished to discover that part of the settlement included the cost of accommodating many of the prisoners of war, which, by his estimate, overcharged the Russians by a factor of twenty, amounting to an extortionate indemnity charge, smuggled onto the books under a humanitarian cloak.14
If anything, Japanese public reaction was even more negative, with two days of rioting in Tokyo, Kobe and Yo
kohama, in which seventeen people died. The Japanese, it seemed, had expected all of Sakhalin, all of the Liaodong Peninsula (and not merely the railway), as well as a satisfactory indemnity from the Russians. Instead, at the end of the war, Japanese forces had been obliged to hand several captured places back to Russia, as if Japan were the defeated power, and not the unquestionable victor. In all these matters, there was little discussion of the feelings of the locals in Korea and Manchuria, who were citizens of neither Russia nor Japan, but in whose territory the war had been fought, and on whose heads the consequences would fall.15
Such arguments would cause many Japanese to harbour sour feelings towards many of their leaders, particularly the politicians who had carried them into the war with such hopeful promises. However, such a backlash did not extend to Admiral Tōgō, who remained the unimpeachable hero of the hour. When the dust of the Russo-Japanese war had settled, it was Tōgō’s achievement at Tsushima that would be remembered as the purest, most uncorrupted, most resounding victory. It made him a national hero, and kept him in that role for the rest of his life.
13
Tōgō on Tour
Until 1905, discussion of Tōgō concentrated on his quiet demeanour, his unflappable expression and his incisive concentration. Tōgō was the man who slept in his uniform while on duty during the Taiwan campaign, who never once lost his temper over the reversals of Port Arthur, and who was nicknamed Oni, ‘The Devil’, by his officers.
While elements of those character traits remained in later life, accounts of Tōgō after the Russo-Japanese war took on a new tone. He was still portrayed as pathologically quiet, soft-spoken and dutiful, but also as a man somewhat out of sorts, awed by his own celebrity and much preferring a quiet retirement. The Tōgō of the 1910s and 1920s sometimes came across as an eccentric sea-dog, clinging keenly to his well-earned retirement, and lachrymose in his remembrances of war stories. Tōgō was getting old.
Admiral Togo Page 21